Ebby

Whoa, now that raised an eyebrow. Doesn’t look like the truck bed is ridiculously high. This checks a lot of boxes, and my crap vertebrae agree.

Definitely following this company.

Ah! It’s a 2012! I was off a tad.

Anyways, it’s a Mac Pro 2.3Ghz i7, 16G ram, 2TB drive, with an internal bluray drive.

Had certainly served me well over the decade.

Built a gaming PC last year and a mini computer arrived last month riiiiight before tariffs kicked in. I think I’m good for the next 4 years at least. My daily driver laptop was built in 2011 so I’m used to hanging onto tech for a while!

If anyone in my household clicked a thumbnail of a video provider through Prime Video on the TV, it would auto-enroll into a limited free trial, then renew as a subscription. There was no notification to the viewer of this behavior, and no authorization/approval from the cardholder.

My recourse has been to go into an obscure corner of my account to cancel after every erroneous click. (I know of the PIN thing, but that’s a headache for everyone; it should be a pin to purchase, not forced for all users.)

Sorry, I forgot this: /s

I’ve sent so many letters to my state’s attorney general over Amazon signing me up for subscriptions without notice and authorization.

It’s just a cost of business for them.

ooOOOOooooo! Someone is behind on their protection money!

FTC: Uber, you have fine print and use dark patterns! Bad!

All other tech companies: Whistling intensifies

The biggest case of poison oak I had in the past decade was from avoiding a fallen tree. Where are these lawyers you speak of when I need them! Ha!

The way I read it, “verify your identity” means prove you’re not a bot, not that they had your number to begin with and need it to match.

But Google thanks you for voluntarily providing that data which is now and forever subject to Google’s privacy policy.

Isn’t this a dinner & donation issue? That’s how American government works now.

You only get takedown notices for negative content. It’s the new and improved Free Speech Censorship®

I just go idle for a week or two and it works again. It seems like a soft IP block. I use a IPv4 address for yt-dlp so CGNAT sort of works in my favor here.

A flash preloader was my first real tech job! As I recall, they stiffed my last paycheck and went under later.

But it was incredibly fun and I made connections that steered my career to a new direction for the next decade.

I don’t necessarily oppose the use of AI as a tool for humans to utilize, but I do have issues with it dictating policies or control over human beings. By the people, for the people, absolutely does not include AI. (Sorry Data, not yet)

Also, any prompts and prompt instructions should be public with results. It is just way too easy to fuck up.

Using your WiFi SSID paired with Alexa Sidewalk gives it all the info it needs to know precisely where it is, even if you lie to it or use VPN.

It’s already associated to your profile.

Spooky fingers

I found one of these fakes on the shelves at CVS!

I’m pretty proud I got something banned after a letter.

I kinda teared up on that article. What hope they had.

For all wondering, this was written in 2007, speculating on the future. It flat out starts by saying they know they’ll be wrong by making these guesses.

They thought we’d have a lunar colony by 2022. Instead we gave ourselves two shots to the feet and looking at the shiny down the barrel.

If not user data and network security concerns, what? Why the ban/sale song and dance?

Wasn’t the whole thing about China scooping up loads of data?

So give a copy of that data to one of the worlds largest advertiser/online markets and license behavioural data from the “baddies”. Yeah, that’ll fix everything.

Everybody loses.

I tried to update my lemmy instance and it all went so horribly wrong. DB never came up, errors everywhere, searching implied I updated to a dev branch sometime in the past (not a dev, don’t think I did) and it’ll be console and DB queries for a fix.

Ran out of time and overwhelmed, I restored backups and buried my head in the sand. Nope, not now. Future, yes, but oh not now.

If you’re considering life360, you’ve already lost the privacy game.

There are different levels of privacy to consider.

Apps: limit number of apps or essential only. Many have built-in trackers for developer kickbacks. Even developers don’t know the full extent of how the data is used.

Device settings: harden the phone by checking all the privacy settings. Install an ad/tracker blocking VPN app.

Evesdroppers: Your phone is a radio transmitter. Companies know this. Your mobile company may have privacy settings and track phones independently of any device settings or app. Also, bluetooth loggers are placed around high traffic areas, such as stores, to record precise location and movement. Disabling wifi, Bluetooth, or Mobile may be considered depending on level of privacy paranoia*.

There may be some privacy respecting tracking options (well, as a family anyway) over on the selfhosted lemmy community if you’re ready to go down that rabbit hole.

•It’s not paranoia if it’s real.